Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett discusses Marvel's attempt to elevate The Inhumans from second tier characters to TV headliners.

There’s a widely disseminated Internet theory that second tier characters The Inhumans got elevated to the franchise forefront because Marvel Comics CEO Ike Perlmutter doesn’t want to promote properties the company doesn't control the movie rights to.  It’s never been officially confirmed or denied, and while I generally avoid perpetuating pure speculation, I’ve always found the premise entirely plausible. Partially because being a family of superpowered beings makes The Inhumans the perfect choice to supplant not one, but two different properties whose movie rights are currently unavailable: X-Men and Fantastic Four.  It was a perfect two birds with one stone sort of solution.  It seems perfect.  On paper.

The trouble being you can’t make something presumptively popular.  That, and the X-Men and Inhumans aren’t interchangeable.  For starters, as I pointed out in a previous column (see “Confessions of a Comic Book Guy - Television’s Next Breakout Star”), the Inhumans have never exactly been fan favorites. Maybe because a race of aristocratic autocratic aliens who generally kept to themselves in their Hidden City made them difficult for readers to relate to and identify with.

Now, personally, I’ve always liked The Inhumans*, ever since I encountered them in Fantastic Four Annual #5.  Regular readers know that I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Lockjaw, their giant teleporting dog.  But historically they’ve always worked better as supporting players, because while they’ve had several titles of their own, none of them lasted very long.  Mostly because Marvel was unable to find a premise that allowed them to connect with enough readers to sustain a series. Over the years Marvel has tried everything from exiling them to inner city America to sending them to outer space.

Since 2014, when Marvel started promoting the characters, the new status quo for the various Inhumans comics (and there have been a lot of them) is their formerly secluded city-state is now “publicly known,” as they used to say in the Marvel Handbooks, and is a world power.  Thanks to the widespread release of Terrigenesis (the substance that gives Inhumans their powers), humans have been transforming into Inhumans, a storyline picked up during the last season of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD TV series.  But even with this kind of promotional push, according to a piece on The Beat, The Inhumans: Marvels Biggest Branding Problem, sales of the comics have been low, and going lower.

Which brings us to the upcoming Inhumans eight-episode TV series that’s premiering on ABC in September.  Over the weekend the first two episodes premiered in IMAX theaters, though, as The Hollywood Reporter put it, “ABC’s Marvel Drama ‘Inhumans’  Underwhelms in Imax Bow.”  It also reports that “an estimated $100,000” was spent to improve the special effects involving Medusa’s hair.  What’s worse, for me anyway, is according to the piece “some insiders say Lockjaw eventually disappears from the story because the production couldn't afford the continued cost to deliver the huge canine.”

While I like TV shows and movies based on comics to be authentic as possible, I'm all in favor of one change the series will be making. According to the i09 piece “Why Marvel’s Inhumans Changed Maximus’s Comic Book Origins,” the character will be more morally conflicted than he is in the comics.  Showrunner Scott Buck is quoted as saying " When you’re doing a TV show, you have the opportunity to be a lot more complex than you might be in a comic book. It just offered us an opportunity to make a much more compelling character.”

Now, I want to be reflexively offended by his statement, but the truth is, at least in this case, I’m totally with Buck.  Maximus has always been among the dullest of the Lee/Kirby Marvel villains, just another scowling, slouching, throne coveting schemer, a second-rate Loki with none of his charm. Worse of all, he's dull.  Plus, in today’s world, the whole “Maximus the Mad” would be considered offensive to the mentally ill.  Frankly, any chance the show wants to make to the character will most likely be an improvement.

The word of mouth on Inhumans has been overwhelmingly negative since the first trailer was released, but this response isn’t coming just from fans online.  According to the UK’s The Guardian, “Marvel’s The Inhumans: destined to be the TV disaster of the year”.  While at this point that’s entirely likely, it’s also just possible a glossy, bland super soap opera might prove to be perfect for an audience who finds Game of Thrones too weird and intense.  I mean somebody is still watching ABC’s Once Upon A Time, so, why not?

* Though I well and truly love the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby version of Black Bolt and company, I have to confess my favorite Inhuman series doesn’t even focus on the Inhuman Royal Family.  I’m speaking of 2005’s Inhumans: Culture Shock by Sean McKeever and Matthew Clark, the story of a group of Inhuman exchange students from Attilan who transfer to the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  It expertly combines the mundane and fantastic, and handles the contact and conflicts between humans and Inhumans with a deft hand.  The series collection is in print and if you get the chance you might want to give it a look.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.